By High Times Staff, with reporting and photography by Brett Churchill
The Berkeley stop of Garcia Hand Picked’s California tour brought sungrown flower, legacy farmers, Jerry Garcia photography, and live Dead songs under one roof.
The jars came first.
At the Chapel of the Flowers in Berkeley, guests approached a tasting table, lifted the lids, followed their noses, and decided which Garcia Hand Picked cultivar to try. Staff loaded samples into PAX dry-herb vaporizers while Jonny Mojo and friends worked through Grateful Dead songs nearby.
Brett Churchill attended the gathering for High Times, documenting an afternoon that may have technically been a product launch but did not feel like somebody had simply booked a room to move units.
Farmers stood beside the flower they grew. Jerry Garcia watched from the walls through photographs spanning different stages of his life. Galactic Farms poured samples of honey produced at its homestead. Deadheads, dispensary customers, cultivators, artists, and other members of the local cannabis community drifted between the tasting tables and the music.
The Berkeley gathering was the opening stop of a four-city Garcia Hand Picked California tour celebrating the collection’s return to the state. Produced in partnership with CBCB, Aundre Speciale, and Budist’s Jocelyn Sheltraw, the event gave the brand its first chance to show what its California homecoming looks like when the names on the farm list become actual people in the room.
A Homecoming Built Around the Farms
When High Times reported on Garcia Hand Picked’s return to California, the central question was whether a brand connected to one of California’s defining musical figures could make a credible bet on small farms and sungrown flower in a market dominated by falling prices and increasingly narrow margins.
The Berkeley event offered a partial answer. Rather than keeping the cultivators buried somewhere in the supply-chain copy, the tour put them in front of consumers.
The California collection features flower and pre-rolls produced by Canna Country Farms, Galactic Farms, Greenshock Farms, Rebel Grown, and Sunrise Gardens. Representatives from Greenshock, Canna Country, and Galactic Farms attended the Berkeley gathering, answering questions about their cultivation practices, genetics, and the plants behind the collection.
That direct contact mattered. A label can say “legacy,” “regenerative,” or “craft” all day. Meeting the person who tended the soil or selected the cultivar makes those words harder to flatten into packaging language.
Galactic Farms made that connection especially tangible by bringing several varieties of honey produced at the farm. Guests tasted honey and cannabis while talking directly with the people responsible for both.
“What excited us about this collaboration was how much intention went into the collection,” Budist said in a statement provided to High Times. “Every cultivar has a story. Every farm has a story. The event gave consumers an opportunity to experience the products while also meeting the people behind the farm and understanding what makes each one unique.”
That approach offered a useful correction to the usual celebrity cannabis formula. Jerry Garcia’s name may get somebody to pick up the jar. It cannot make the flower good, explain where it came from, or keep a small farm alive by itself.
The growers still have to earn the second purchase.
Tasting the Story, Not Just the Potency
Budist partnered with Garcia Hand Picked to help produce the California tour and guide the tasting experience. Solful San Francisco staff led the Berkeley tasting table, where attendees could smell the flower before choosing what to sample through a dry-herb vaporizer.
Churchill singled out Greenshock Farms’ Skunk Gas as a personal favorite, though he described the collection as consistently top shelf.
The sessions were built around more than deciding whether a cultivar hit hard enough. Guests explored aroma, flavor, genetics, cultivation practices, and the characteristics of each farm’s flower.
The format slowed down an experience that legal retail often speeds through. Dispensary shopping can become a blur of potency numbers, menu categories, discounts, and rushed recommendations. At the Chapel of the Flowers, people had time to smell the jars, taste the flower, and ask the growers what made each cultivar distinct.
“Budist believes consumers deserve more context around the products they consume,” the company said. “When people can meet the farmers, hear their stories, and experience products in a thoughtful setting, it creates a much deeper appreciation for the craft behind cannabis.”
That context is particularly valuable for sungrown flower. Outdoor cannabis is still too often treated as a lower-priced category rather than an agricultural product shaped by genetics, season, soil, climate, and cultivation choices.
The Berkeley tasting encouraged people to consider those differences without turning the room into a classroom.
There was still plenty of pleasure involved. Jonny Mojo and friends supplied the afternoon’s Grateful Dead soundtrack. Guests moved between flower, honey, conversation, and music without the gathering feeling segmented into a formal panel followed by a designated networking hour.
It felt closer to a community gathering than a trade activation, which is not an accidental distinction when the brand bears Jerry Garcia’s name.
Jerry Garcia Was on the Walls, but the Event Stayed in the Present
For Churchill, the strongest element of the event was the photography.
A Retro Photo Archive exhibit curated by Ricki and Jay Blakesberg traced Garcia through the years, both onstage and away from it. Inside the chapel, the photographs gave people something to gather around that was not for sale.
The images showed Garcia young and old, before and after the weight of cultural mythology settled around him. They became natural conversation points and placed the cannabis collection within a longer story about Northern California music, art, improvisation, and community.
“The best part of the event was the Jerry Garcia photo exhibit,” Churchill said. “It was a display of Jerry Garcia throughout the years, young and old. It really showed how he grew into the star he became.”
“Jerry Garcia’s legacy has always been about more than music,” Budist said. “It’s about creativity, community, and shared experiences. Bringing together the farmers, the photography, the music, and the products created an opportunity to tell a more complete story about what inspired this collection in the first place.”
That more complete story is also what prevents the project from becoming pure nostalgia.
Plenty of brands can put a famous name on a package, hang archival images on a wall, hire a cover band, and call the result authentic. The more meaningful move in Berkeley was putting working California farmers beside those photographs and giving their stories real space.
The pictures looked backward. The growers made the case for what comes next.
The Name Opened the Door
One afternoon cannot prove that premium sungrown cannabis will survive California’s price compression. A successful tasting tour also cannot guarantee that a returning brand will retain its standards as distribution expands.
Those questions will be answered on dispensary shelves, harvest after harvest.
But the Berkeley stop demonstrated how a cannabis homecoming can carry some weight. The event did not rely on Garcia’s name alone. It brought together the farms producing the flower, the people tasting it, the music surrounding it, and the photography preserving the history behind it.
Longtime Grateful Dead fans danced beside cannabis farmers. Consumers tasted honey from the same farm community producing some of the flower. The people behind the jars were available to answer questions instead of existing as names in a press release.
The name opened the door. The growers, music, photographs, and people gave everyone a reason to stay.
All event photography by Brett Churchill.
